Happy Thanksgiving!

Musings on the forge of God this year and on Living in Faith

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word FORGE in a number of ways. Here are the ones which I’m focusing on for these Thanksgiving Day musings.

FORGE as a noun:

1. A furnace (or a shop with its furnace) where metal is heated and wrought

2. A workshop where iron is made malleable

FORGE as a verb:

To form something, such as metal, by heating and hammering

When we look back on 2023, what can we be thankful for?

I guess for myself, first I’ll take stock of the major milestones that happened this year:

In January: I was thankful to be alive and get my eyesight back. Because at the end of 2022, I had been struck with double vision and literally could not see straight. I thought it was possibly from a concussion from a bike accident, but turns out it was due to my blood sugar being out of control from diabetes. As I started to get my blood sugar under control, my eyesight more or less returned to normal, and I was thankful.

In February: I was thankful to be ready to soft launch my online course Bitcoin Basics, which I had planned to launch at the end of 2022 on the heels of having just published my first book “Demystifying Crypto: Central Bank Digital Currency, the Great Reset and the War to Enslave Humanity” (to date this is still my only book, and it’s possibly even more relevant to more people today than it was when it was first published).

In March: I was thankful to have met someone online whom I felt a special connection with, who was interested in similar things to me and who had knowledge about cryptocurrencies and an aversion to central bank digital currency, and I spent almost the whole month with her via online chats learning about new ways to invest and earn money in the stablecoin markets. Thankful to the point, in fact, where I threw all my discernment out the window, and all my life savings with it, only to realize too late that I had been scammed and taken for a ride leaving me penniless.

This is when I entered the forge of God.

In April, I was thankful for my friends who tried to help me out of a big financial jam, only to get scammed and lose their money on top of my own, yet still showed me love and compassion instead of brow beating me about how stupid I was and how they would never forgive me. I was especially thankful for the faith in God that I cultivated over the prior several years, because through my friends who were harmed in trying to help me, I saw God’s grace and mercy. And those verses from Proverbs that I turned into a song (“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart; lean not on your own understanding.” -Proverbs 3:5) instantly and truly became the mantra of my life.

The month of April for me was filled with manic highs and depressive lows, and constant temptations of the Devil to give up my faith and accept defeat in life (which time and time again, I had to fight off by re-doubling down on my faith in God, and reminding myself that faith is belief in things we can not see and do not understand). Faith was a choice, every day, sometimes every other minute. Because the only other option besides complete surrender of fear and embracing of faith, for me anyway at the time, would have been a surrender TO fear, which only leads to certain death. I made the decision to choose faith over fear, whatever that entailed, and to keep it up.

As for the manic highs, I wrote my second book in a flurry, a detailed account of the scam of the century and how— after relentlessly criticizing people who got fooled by the Covid scam into willingly and enthusiastically injecting immune system destroying bioweapons and untested nanotechnology over and over again into their bodies— how I became victim of such a freaking obvious romance/finance scam that it could only be explained by my sheer stupidity and loneliness-inspired gullibility. So my book got about two-thirds done but when I started going through all the screenshots of the Telegram messages, it was too humiliating and so I stopped.

Plus, I was out of money and still needed to make the rent. So I had to stop writing and figure out what I could possibly do to make enough money to survive.

I’m spending more time here unpacking what happened in the month of April because I realized that my life was entirely now in God’s hands. I had no cash reserves. No income. Only about a hundred dollars in the bank. And limited credit, not enough to pay rent but enough to keep food on the table month to month, assuming I could pay the bill when it came due. So I really needed work.

This is why I had to fold in the chips on my livestream show and became essentially a recluse, because I was on the razor’s edge of oblivion, and did not want to end up homeless. I was up night after night, and at it day after day, sending job applications and looking for ANYTHING that I could do to pay the bills in short order.

More on the forge of God

In the prior several years, if you were watching my livestreams you saw me devoting my life to my faith in God and practicing my faith every day. So why did God throw me into the furnace? What type of IRON was I who needed to be made malleable?

All these were questions for which I had no answers at the time. But having answers would have been to lean on my own understanding. And I knew that I was being called to live those words from Proverbs that I had turned into a song. I was to trust in the Lord with all of my heart.

This was SO HARD to do for a brain-centered person like myself who PRIDED myself on understanding complicated things.

Hmm… pride? understanding? Doesn’t the Lord make fools out of the wise, and whose foolishness is greater than all wisdom?

This is when I actually realized I was in God’s Forge.

The only way forward for me was going to be my complete surrender to faith. That, or my complete destruction.

I chose faith over fear, but I was still afraid.

The fear didn’t go away but I had to CHOOSE to focus on my faith.

When I realized I was in God’s Forge, that God had allowed me to throw all my money and life savings into the fire, I had two choices: either give up hope, or to declare my full faith in God (and chuck my own understanding to the curb).

There was no way forward for me except to give it up to God to make a way for me.

I decided to give it up to God and let God forge me into whatever he wants.

When the tables started turning…

In the back half of April, I had a dentist appointment, and I confided to my dentist who is also a good buddy, what had happened to me and how badly I needed a job.

I’ve known this guy for probably 5-6 years now maybe longer, and this wasn’t the first time he asked me why I wouldn’t just re-activate my license to practice law and go back to being a lawyer.

There were SO MANY REASONS over the years that I was resistant to this. Here are just three of them:

• My dad was a lawyer and during the years my mom was dying of cancer (from when I was 5 years old until she died a few weeks before I turned 10), his 2-hour commutes to and from his Manhattan office kept him away from the family, and several times he was not there when my mom had a seizure or needed urgent help. This created a primal resistance in me that I couldn’t seem to let go of.

• When I was in law school and wanted to clerk at the NYC D.A.’s office for the summers, my dad’s career as a movie producer had started taking off, and he recommended against this, and instead encouraged me to work with him in creative development. He said my legal education was great background and I could do whatever I wanted. It sounded good and opportunity to spend more time with my dad was irresistible.

• After I had moved back to LA to finish law school, I started interning at Capitol Records in their business affairs department, and was hired full time when I graduated. I worked several years there doing contracts and licensing work until I decided to retire from the law and pursue songwriting professionally. I had some early success here, and my pride kept me from ever going back to practicing law.

This time, my dentist buddy wasn’t taking no for an answer. “Evan, you have to do this. You can go back into law and start making good money, and you won’t be struggling anymore. My best friend is a lawyer downtown and owns a good firm, he’s hiring new lawyers all the time. I don’t know if he’ll hire you but I’m going to call him and ask him to meet with you, and you need to go meet with him.”

“OK” I said. And I thanked him. I figured, you know the old saying about insanity being how we do the same things over and over again in the same way, expecting a different result? I was finally ready to try a different way.

So in April, I was thankful to God for throwing me into the forge, and thankful to my friends who had shown me generosity in my times of trouble, and then grace and mercy when their good deeds were punished.

In May…

In the Month of May, after several weeks of disappointments in terms of job rejections and seeming to hit a brick wall in my job search, I made a big decision:

I decided to reactivate my Bar license to practice law in California after all.

For the last couple of weeks in April and the first couple of weeks in May, I was meeting with lawyers, applying to law firms, sending out queries, and working incessantly with ChatGPT (“the AI”) to update my resume and my LinkedIn profile.

My pitch was that I would love to come back to work as an attorney but I needed to get some basic training in litigation so that I could do courtroom law, and I was willing to start at the bottom as an intake person, or a clerk, or even a receptionist, for a low salary, and that in time I would reactivate my Bar license when I had the basic skill sets I lacked from those earlier career choices NOT to do the law clerk thing.

I thought it was a humble way to get started and get my feet in the door, but it was not a successful strategy. In fact, not one single law firm responded positively to this pitch.

In the second week of May, I got so far as to have a conversation with a recruiter who gave me some valuable insights.

He asked me, “Evan, I like your story and you have a good background and a lot of passion. I think you can do well if you can get your foot in the door, but can you tell me anything about all of the job postings you applied for, anything they all have in common?” The lightbulb went on. “Yes,” I said, “All the applications say that an active bar license is required.”

“Exactly,” the recruiter told me. “They ALL say that.”

He went on to tell me that having an active bar license is the bare minimum in getting your foot in the door at a law firm, and that if there were any way I could get my license reactivated, it would be far easier for me to find work.

I realized that I had no choice but to make this happen, so I contacted the State Bar of California and asked them what it would cost for me to reactivate my license. I had to get fingerprinted (“Live Scan”) and pay some back fees and penalties, and it was going to cost me around a thousand dollars.

A thousand dollars may as well have been a million dollars, being flat broke, but having exhausted my efforts trying to find work, and after what the recruiter told me, I broke out my phone book and started making calls to see if I could raise $1K.

My first call was to a dear friend, himself a non-practicing lawyer, who is also one of my paid Substackers (you know who you are, buddy!) and he loved the idea of me going back into the law.

I asked him if I could borrow that grand to reactivate my license, and he made me a counter-offer to teach his son the same crypto/Bitcoin basics that I was teaching in my online course. (Those lessons haven’t happened yet due to mutual scheduling impediments, but they will soon if his kid still wants them.)

Once I had reactivated my license, the same friend referred a client to me who needed a cease and desist letter sent out to someone for a nuisance on his property, and another friend hired me to do a contract for her online based business.

So in May, I was thankful for friends who would give me business to help me make the rent and stay housed, since I was truly living penny to penny barely making it by.

But I was now a licensed attorney again, and now all I needed was to find work.

And so I was thankful for my parents (my deceased Oscar winning, multi-millionaire dad who left me nothing in his will, and my “adoptive mom” who doesn’t talk to me) for sending me to law school and giving me “something to fall back on” since I was now officially in the “need to fall back on something” part of my life.

Incidentally, this post turns out to be a great exercise in looking back and finding things to be thankful for each and every month of 2023. I whole heartedly recommend it!

In June, July, and August…

In the month of June, I had now spent well over a hundred hours with my AI overlord assistant ChatGPT, learning how to revise my resume and LinkedIn profile to best highlight my experience and present my strengths.

Sometime in June or July, I set up my freelancer profile on Upwork and started doing some freelance work as an attorney in August.

In the summer months of 2023, I was thankful for Upwork and the ability to make some money dusting off my legal skills, helping people, and getting some 5-star reviews and good feedback I could screenshot and share on my social media profiles.

The heat of the forge cranked up at the end of August

Everything seemed to be going in the right direction but I was in for some sucker punches to the gut in the end of August.

You see, all through the pandemic lockdowns (the onslaught of the New World Order) my prior consulting business was wiped out when my two top clients stopped engaging my services.

I talked about this on the livestream shows a little bit as it was happening. My rent was unpaid for a long stretch of time, over two years, and much of it was covered by the two rounds of rental assistance provided by the State of California and the City of Los Angeles, but the “emergency period” expired at the end of January (or the end of March, if you count the extra two months of protections for low income residents provided by the County of Los Angeles).

I had in fact saved up money to start paying rent in April and to start paying off the back rent which comes due in February 2024. But my escapades falling victim to the romance/finance scam wiped out everything I had saved for these purposes.

And in the third week of August 2023, my landlords served me with a Three (3) Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit, seeking over twelve thousand dollars in back rent that while the law provides this isn’t technically due until February 2024, landlords were given the rights to sue for eviction for back rent, and tenants were given the protections of the Covid rent stabilization protections to use as an affirmative defense.

So at the end of August 2023, I was thankful for the Covid scam for at least providing me with affirmative defenses against eviction, even while they ruined the world with authoritarianism. A silver lining to the cloud.

In September…

Lo and behold, in September, I was sued by my landlord for eviction. Now it was time again to come face to face with my fears, and to choose faith over fear. It wasn’t easy.

My gigs on Upwork were bringing some money in but not enough on their own. The 5 star reviews and positive written feedback provided me with some social media juice and at least bolstering my profiles and attracting attention that could bring some opportunities.

But the lawsuit was a very real thing, and having no litigation experience, I was forced to seek self-help remedies and any help I could get, so that I wouldn’t end up homeless.

Enter the Tenant Power Toolkit by Stay Housed LA.

When you get sued for eviction, you’re served with a Summons and Complaint. I got mine with a loud knock on the door at 8am one day in September.

All of a sudden, I’m no longer just Evan who lives in an apartment in Los Angeles. I’m now a “Defendant” and my landlord is the “Plaintiff” and I have 5 days to respond.

If you don’t respond on time to a Summons and Complaint with some sort of legal action (most commonly an “Answer”) you will be found in default, and you will automatically lose the lawsuit and get evicted.

Doing legal Answers and filing them are cumbersome and expensive. It costs $250 just to file an Answer with the court in Los Angeles. And they have to be done a certain way, with certain forms, that if you don’t know, you can’t do it.

The Tenant Power Toolkit is a free service provided by Stay Housed LA and it functions like a “wizard” which is a bunch of questions you answer online, using your Summons and Complaint and each screen shows you exactly what to look for and where to put your answers, and at the end of the process which takes a couple of hours, it automatically generates your legal documents AND files them with the court.

Best of all for people who don’t have the financial means to pay these exorbitant fees, the Tenant Power Toolkit can file a fee waiver for you with the court so that you can get your papers filed without having to pay those fees.

Since I had been out of work for so long and had received various forms of financial and rental assistance during that time, I qualified for the fee waivers.

I also learned by doing the Tenant Power Toolkit that the best way to preserve your rights in an eviction case is to demand a jury trial. The toolkit also files your jury demand and requests additional fee waivers for court costs and jury fees.

And so in September, I was thankful for the Tenant Power Toolkit and for the non profits who provided such assistance to people facing evictions in Los Angeles.

“This shit is real.” Life saving, in my case.

In October…

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire” it seemed I was going, with 2023 looking like quite possibly the year Evan was going to become homeless and lose all the rest of my personal possessions including my apartment, my artwork on the walls, my musical instruments, my beloved accordion, my clothes…

WHERE WOULD I KEEP ANY OF THESE THINGS WITHOUT A HOME?

The fear was palatable but at the same time, my faith was stronger in October than it was at the beginning of April, and so I had that faith to draw on.

All through the year, I increased my devotion to deepening my relationship with God.

This included launching a weekly bible study with friends Zoom call on Sundays (contact me if you’d like to join this group, you are more than welcome and invited!) and personal, daily morning reads of the Bible. Every day, taking in a little more of the Word of God. I do this first thing every morning, before turning on any computers or checking any devices, or allowing anything to come in except the Word of God.

These morning reads have become some of my favorite things every day to look forward to.

I’m leaving out my long and winding efforts to develop a relationship with my favorite cavalry church Godspeak, which is so far from me that without a car it’s been next to impossible for me to get to in person, so I watch online every Sunday.

I’ve pitched them my Songs for Jesus and been rejected to do a music and film documentary project with their awesome worship band. This was devastating but I have not given up hope. God put those songs in my heart and I still believe there is a purpose for them which is even greater than having brought this one person to Jesus.

Pastor Rob McCoy from Godspeak often says, “The Bible is the only book that when you read it, it reads you.”

And so in October, I was thankful to God for bringing me to Jesus, and for Godspeak for existing and for being a beacon of light to so many people, including me, even if from afar. Even if my project pitch was summarily rejected. Even if… still thankful.

And back to the eviction lawsuit…

After filing my Answer to the eviction (called an “Unlawful Detainer”) lawsuit using the Tenant Power Toolkit, I started applying for— and being rejected to— free legal aid services to see if anyone would take my case and represent me and fight for me.

I had the protections of the affirmative defenses offered by the Covid renters protections, and there are some other defenses as well but I didn’t have any idea how I could effectively make my case when I felt all this was moving so fast.

From one website to another, looking into the free legal aid options, I found out that my apartment, being located just a block away from the Beverly Hills border, is in a zip code that is not considered a “favorable zip code” for the organizations who provide free legal aid.

You need to live in an area that’s considered dirt poor, in other words. And the median income of my area is skewed heavily upwards due to Beverly Hills being across the street.

But in my hunt for online aid, I was directed to self help classes including the Tenant Empowerment Program (“TEP”) which is run by a community based non profit called the Eviction Defense Network (“EDN” for short).

EDN’s website links to a bunch of videos that show you step-by-step how to deal with different phases of the eviction lawsuit and how to prepare for representing yourself.

The TEP program involves watching these videos several times each, and attending webinars where you are trained in how to get ready for court appearances and sometimes get to ask questions directly to an attorney.

I started attending TEP classes and watching all the videos in the self help series. There are generally up to 75 people on these webinars. The TEP classes are held several times each week, and there is only time for questions from the people who have court appearances in the next couple of days following each class.

For instance on Monday’s class, they will only allow people with court appearances on Tuesday or Wednesday to ask questions. Then they have a Wednesday class where only people with court dates on Thursday or Friday can ask questions. And a Saturday class where people with Monday appearances can ask questions.

Some of the TEP classes go for 6 hours. The executive director and the volunteers are tireless and so giving of their time, but they are also no-nonsense because of the time limits and how many people they are trying to help.

At each of these classes, I kept hearing the same thing over and over: “We are short of attorneys. If only we had some more attorneys we could help more people.”

The big shift…

As my first court date was approaching, I finally got to ask a question on one of the TEP classes.

When you submit your information they ask for a bunch of info from your summons and complaint, about your case number, the courthouse and division you’re assigned to, the judge’s name, the date and time of your next appearance, what stage of the case you’re in, and details about your building, the notice you received from the landlord, and more. This helps them quickly ascertain what help you need the most. Then you can add additional info or ask a question.

I submitted my information, and included at the bottom a little note: “I am an attorney but no litigation experience. If we get to meet and discuss my case, I would love to talk about becoming a lawyer for you if you can train me how to handle these cases so I can help others in similar situations.”

This was on one of the marathon Saturday morning webinars.

That afternoon which was about a month ago, I received a text message from EDN’s executive director:

“Are you serious about wanting to be an attorney for us? If so, let’s talk.”

This led to a great first phone call and an offer to come volunteer and learn some of the basics by shadowing the executive director at the downtown LA courthouses.

I jumped on the opportunity and started immediately the following Monday.

The next week, an opportunity came up for me to attend an intensive 3-day bootcamp training for trial lawyers run by an organization called NITA.

You may be able to find me somewhere on the left of the above photograph. In 3 days, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy trained us in courtroom essentials and every aspect of a case from opening to closing statements, introducing evidence, examining witnesses and more.

And so in October, I was thankful to EDN, and to NITA, for opening the door for me to become a trial attorney.

In November…

I am now effectively this month, a full time trial attorney for EDN, still in intensive training but already actively handling jury selection and getting ready to argue my first case next week.

How the LORD makes a way where there is no way!

As we enter this Thanksgiving holiday and the end of the year, looking back on how God threw me into the forge to burn up everything that did not glorify him and help me serve others, I am nothing but thankful. Thankful for every life changing month of this awe inspiring year.

And we haven’t even hit December yet.

Whatever you’re going through, I hope that sharing my 2023 journey may be helpful to let you know that there is nothing God can not fix or set right when you put your full trust and faith in Him.

May the Lord bless you and keep you! I am so very thankful for you.